September 17, 2008 archive

absurity: new fed agency to buy bad debt???

Proponents of a more systematic government role to help relieve financial institutions of their toxic securities range from Lawrence H. Summers, the former Treasury secretary under President Clinton, to former Federal Reserve chairmen Paul A. Volcker and Alan Greenspan.

New York Times above the front page fold, 17 September 2008

Muse in the Morning

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Muse in the Morning

A Transition through Poetry X

Art Link

Isolation

Loneliness and Isolation

The mind–yearning, seeking, questing, emerging–female.

The body–betraying the mind–male.

Can one express what it feels like to be transsexual?

Before I was man and was treated like man.

After I will be woman.

Now I am both/neither.

Neither generally wins, excluded from both.

Is it too difficult for others to comprehend

Or is it too difficult for me to explain?

Is there anyone who will accept me as I am

Or will I only be accepted/rejected

For who I was/will be?

Loneliness and isolation nip at the edges of my being.

Certainty becomes expectation.

Expectation becomes hope.

Hopes become dreams.

The dreams dissipate into nothingness.

Another friend is gone.

New friends are made.

Life changes but why must the bridge be so tenuous?

Loneliness and isolation blur my consciousness.

Why must others always bring up the past

Which has become so foreign to me?

The events are there but the feelings are gone.

How do I describe the deeper feelings that have replaced them?

Emotions long submerged boil to the surface

And erupt full-blown into the mind

But there is no one present with whom to share them.

Loneliness and isolation crowd around my soul.

How do I explain the feeling of hormones

Coursing through my body,

Changing it to fit the mind?

How do I deal with the sexuality, the sensuality

Exploding in every nerve ending?

When there is nobody with whom to explore these sensations,

Time slows considerably.

How does one measure the growth of a breast?

With a watch, a sundial, a calendar, or with a life?

Loneliness and isolation seek to smother my existence

–Robyn Elaine Serven

–November, 1992

absurity: new fed agency to buy bad debt???

Proponents of a more systematic government role to help relieve financial institutions of their toxic securities range from Lawrence H. Summers, the former Treasury secretary under President Clinton, to former Federal Reserve chairmen Paul A. Volcker and Alan Greenspan.

New York Times above the front page fold, 17 September 2008

The Stars Hollow Gazette

So last night you found out my Great Grandpa worked on the Panama Canal.

My Gramp didn’t do anything glamorous, he was an accountant in the payroll office.

He wrote an unpublished memoir that some people in my family have and the story that stuck in my mind was this one-

When the workers got to Panama they’d throw their hats off the boat as a symbol of their commitment to stay.

The conditions were terrible- tents, mud, and insects.

So he and his buddy were sitting at breakfast.  They were eating oatmeal with raisins and put the usual milk and sugar on them.

Then one of the raisins in his buddy’s bowl started moving.

The buddy left on the next ship.

Alaska environmentalist on Palin record: It’s not pretty

What’s Sarah Palin’s environmental record as governor of Alaska?

I asked an old friend, a college classmate of my wife, who’s been an environmentalist working in Alaska for three decades, most of her post-college life.  In a nutshell:

Her record is one of support for wolf control by illegal means, opposition to the listing of endangered species, and unethical intervention into public initiative processes.

But read her report yourself:  

Why We Vote / The Who & Floyd

What gets you? You know there’s something, something bright and shiny you cannot look away from. Something that thrills. Something that you are like a moth to a flame for.

…..see me…

It may be something as small as recognition, you know that “Good job” or “You rock” you never got as a child. The audience factor, whether at home, work or play. Do you love that moment your spouse says “WOW! You did GREAT!” Do you look to recognition in your community or even something as mundane as ratings online to reaffirm your worth?  Hell, you aren’t alone.

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feel me….

What gets you may be connection. That visceral feeling you have towards someone, that feeling of someone you would like to be. Often a celebrity or other you imagine to be “above you” your admiration seems warranted.  You forgive their faults without question, for you see in them yours, you see them rising above, as you have or wish you had. You compare yourself to their best, see kindred in their insights, their wit, their logic.  They are you, but a better you than you see yourself.  A perfect example of familiarity breeds contempt; distance makes the shiny stay shiny.

Don’t Cry For Me Wasilla

 




It won’t be easy, you’ll think it strange

When I try to explain the Bush Doctrine

and the reason I fired Walt Monegan

You won’t believe me

All you will see is a girl you once knew

Wearing lipstick and a flag pin

Shooting wolves and hunting caribou

I wanted it to happen, but then I changed

Couldn’t build that bridge after all

Saying thanks but no thanks

Keeping my earmarks

So I chose Jesus

Banning books, preaching abstinence too

Until my unmarried daughter

Got knocked up in high school  

Don’t cry for me Wasilla

The truth is not as important

As my election

My mad insistence

That Russia’s nearness

Means foreign experience

As for fortune, and as for fame

John McCain invited me in

And it seems to the world they are all I desire

They are illusions

Just like the oil pipeline and energy supply

Polar bears are not endangered

Everything I say is a lie  

Don’t cry for me Wasilla

The truth is not as important

As my election

My mad insistence

That Russia’s nearness

Means foreign experience

Have I lied too much?

There’s nothing more I can think of to say to you

Because my handlers haven’t coached me enough

I can’t give an interview

The Wall Street crisis and the failure of American capitalism

Original article by Barry Grey, via World Socialist Web Site:

The end of Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch, two of the largest Wall Street investment banks, one week after the government takeover of the mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, marks a new stage in the convulsive crisis of American capitalism.  

Why We Vote / The Who & Floyd

What gets you? You know there’s something, something bright and shiny you cannot look away from.

…..see me…

It may be something as small as recognition, you know that “Good job” or “You rock” you never got as a child. The audience factor, whether at home, work or play. Do you love that moment your spouse says “WOW! You did GREAT!” Do you look to recognition in your community or even something as ratings online to reaffirm your worth.  Hell, you aren’t alone.

Photobucket

feel me….

What gets you may be connection. That visceral feeling you have towards someone, that feeling of someone you would like to be. Often a celebrity or other you imagine to be “above you” your admiration seems warranted.  You forgive their faults without question, for you see in them yours, you see them rising above, as you have or wish you had. You compare yourself to their best, see kindred in their insights, their wit, their logic.  They are you, but a better you than you see yourself.  A perfect example of familiarity breeds contempt; distance makes the shiny stay shiny.

What’s in a name?

OK, so its not quite hump day, but it sure feels like it to me. I’m needing a break from all the doom and gloom in the financial world and the endless campaign. So I thought it may be time for a little fun.

Did anyone else notice the names of Sarah Palin’s children? Track, Bristol, Willow, Piper Indy, and Trig Paxon. Over at Mudflats, we learn how Todd and Sarah came up with these names.

We know that Sarah and Todd Palin like to name their children with sports/Alaskan theme names.

Track, who was born in Track and Field season.

Bristol, after Bristol Bay.

Willow, after the town north of Wasilla, or the Willow Ptarmigan (Alaska State Bird).

Piper Indy, after the Piper Cub airplane, and the Polaris Indy snowmachine (snowmobile for you ‘outsiders’). And an interesting quote from Palin has her saying Indy could also refer to “Independence”…. Hmmm.

Trig Paxson, after the town of Paxson, north of Wasilla.

Voyage to the Son of the Return of Anthrax

So you remember those hearings where our brave Democratic Congressmen, armed with Super Subpoena Power, were going to “get to the bottom of things”?

The oversight joke

Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com

Tuesday Sept. 16, 2008 11:21 EDT

Vividly illustrating this impotence in the anthrax context, Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York used his five minutes to ask Mueller about several of the most glaring holes in the FBI’s case against Bruce Ivins. Nadler specifically focused on the fact that scientists (including in the FBI) had long claimed that the anthrax sent to Sen. Daschele was dried anthrax that had been coated with silica and was thus far too sophisticated for Ivins to have prepared, only for the FBI suddenly to reverse itself recently and claim that the anthrax was not coated with silica but had, instead, simply naturally absorbed silicon from the air.

Nadler had various good questions about that — including wanting to know the level of concentration of silica found in the anthrax (since, if it were higher than 1/2 of 1%, it would mean it was impossible for it to have been naturally absorbed). Mueller’s response: I don’t know the answers to those questions. I’ll have to get back to you at some point.

Nadler than asked one of the most central questions in the anthrax case: he pointed out that the facilities that (unlike Ft. Detrick) actually have the equipment and personnel to prepare dry, silica-coated anthrax are the U.S. Army’s Dugway Proving Ground and the Battelle Corporation, the private CIA contractor that conducts substantial research into highly complex strains of anthrax. Nadler asked how the FBI had eliminated those institutions as the culprits behind the attack. After invoking generalities to assure Nadler that the FBI had traced the anthrax back to Ivins’ vial (which doesn’t answer the question), Mueller’s response was this: I don’t know the answers to those questions as to how we eliminated Dugway and Battelle. I’ll have to get back to you at some point.

Nadler then ended by asking whether Mueller would object to an independent commission or other body to review the FBI’s evidence and its accusations against Ivins and whether the FBI would cooperate with such an independent inquiry. Mueller pretended to answer by telling Nadler that the FBI intended to ask some members of the National Academy of Science to review the FBI’s scientific claims, but that didn’t answer the question as to whether the FBI opposed a full-scale independent review of the FBI’s case and whether the FBI would cooperate with it. Nadler then noted his time was up and a Republican member then began asking about The Grave Threats Posed by The Terrorists in order to justify the FBI’s imminent, new domestic surveillance powers, with not a single new fact — literally not one — disclosed about the anthrax investigation, despite Nadler’s perfectly relevant questions.

I’ll note for my own reputation that the circular link is Greenwald’s.

But I forgive him.

Pony Party: enae Volare Mezzo!

This is Fedor’s entrance music!

This is a Pony Party.  Do not rec the Pony Party.

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